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2. Memories of Mekwar: Historical identities and student diversity
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2 Memories of Mekwar: Historical identities and student diversity (2) έϮϜϣ ϰϓ ΩέΎθΘϳέ ϝί Ύϣ mazaala riitshaard fi makwaar ‘Richard, still in Mekwar? Mekwar is the pre-colonial name for the town in Sudan now called Sennar, on the Blue Nile south of Wad Medani, where this student is from. The name Mekwar conjures up various local myths related to the Turco-Egyptian time period, one being that Mekwar was the name of a southerner who made his camp at the site of modern-day Sennar. Sennar itself was the site of the first Islamic sultanate in Sudan, the Funj at the Kingdom of Sennar, which remains a source of pride for many Sudanese people. For some, the historical ancestry of a “Sudanese identity” is seen to have its roots in the fusion of Arab, Islamic and African cultures at the seat of the Kingdom of Sennar. Poet ‘Abd al-Hai, of the Desert and Jungle School, al-ghabba wa al-saHra’, in his epic work, “The Return to Sennar”, describes the new Sudanese “homeland”, as an amalgamation of symbols taken from the jungle in the south, the desert in the north and ancient Nubian civilization (Abusabib 2004). Such a melding of indigenous, Arab and Islamic elements is one reflection of a complex Sudanese identity which persists in people’s minds, as this text message sent to one student illustrates. The purpose of this chapter is to provide the social and cultural context for present day students at the University of Khartoum. They are presented with certain overarching structures and a number of options for social identification. Processes of Islamization and Arabization1 cannot be ignored as propellers of 1 In this research, I deal with Arabization, or the process of acquiring the Arab ethnic or cultural identity . Islamization refers to the process of acquiring Islam the religion, and is also, importantly, related to the Arabization process but not a necessary correlate of it. There are millions of Muslims that do Chapter 2 24 Sudan’s most important events, defining racial hierarchies and social inequalities which persist in the capital today. Such powerful forces have ideological correlates , Islamism and Arabism, such that some processes can be understood in terms of notions of superiority, a teleological guide to action, and others in more pragmatic terms. For example, massive rural-urban migration has in part sped up Arabization and Islamization for practical reasons, clearly based on necessity, the need to adapt to the mainstream in order to survive i.e. “Sudanization” (Doornbos 1988). The local Arabic and Islam, in turn, take as inspiration the practices and influences of Arab-Islamic culture that have been flowing into Sudan from the Arabian Peninsula and continue to have an enormous impact on notions of Sudanese identity. Thus, we can speak of at least two overarching dynamics which characterize Sudanese identity: the unequal relation between the “Center” of Sudan, geographically situated in Greater Khartoum and the “Periphery”, the underdeveloped rural regions of the rest of the country, and the relation between the culture of the “Center” and the larger global Islamic community, i.e. the umma, symbolically positioned in Mecca, the heart of the “Middle East” and towards which inhabitants of the Nile Valley have long been oriented. I will discuss these relations with respect to relevant historical and contextual events that have led up to present day. Pre-colonial history The Nile which runs the length of Sudan from south to north has defined much of the region’s history as Arab nomads coming from the Arabian peninsula followed its banks southwards leaving a lasting imprint on the social and cultural make-up of the territory. Arabic and Islam first came into Sudan through these Arab nomadic groups between the 7th and 16th centuries. They intermarried with local Nubians who lived along the Nile, who then acquired the religion and language and, for some groups, Arab genealogies. Such intermarriages facilitated the emergence of Islamic kingdoms in the 16th through 19th centuries, the Fur in Darfur, the Funj at Sennar and Tegali in the Nuba Mountains. These civilizations hosted merchants and itinerant Islamic Sufi scholars who facilitated the spread Arabic and Islam along the Nile and Red Sea Coast. The Arab identity and language became the symbols of authority, trade, religion and army (Miller & Abu-Manga 1992; Sharkey 2004). Later in the 19th century, the Turco-Egyptian occupation also furthered the Arabization and Islamization processes in southern areas as features of control and domination, the slave trade. Towards the end of not claim...